The present invention relates to an integrated circuit (IC) card adapter which is employed to implement an automatic charging system for charging fees for use on a toll road, an expressway, or the like and to achieve discrimination of a vehicle to which permission for entry into a security zone is granted.
Heretofore, in an automatic charging system utilized to charge fees in a toll road facility or the like, a wireless IC card developing a single dedicated function has been regarded as an identification card of each vehicle, for example, as described in pages 26 to 29 of "Traffic Engineering", Vol. 21, No. 2 issued from the Institute of Traffic Engineering.
However, the wireless IC card or plate has relatively a large size and a heavy weight i.e. the user of the wireless IC card feels inconvenience when carrying the IC plate in a purse or the like. On the other hand, an IC card has already been put to actual use in some financial facilities and the like. In the processing of the IC card, information read and write operations are ordinarily conducted via a contact point thereof. Since the IC card has a smaller size and a reduced weight, transportability thereof is suitable for the user. However, it has been difficult for the IC card to achieve the information read and write operations of a non-contact type, for example, through a radio communication, an optical communication, and the like.
On the other hand, at locations such as a toll gate of an expressway, it is preferable, in consideration of mitigation of the traffic congestion due to the charging operation, to adopt a non-stop automatic charging system using a wireless IC card. If the IC cards used in the financial facilities already put to practice can be processed in the charging system above, the charging operation can be accomplished together with confirmation of the balance of the user's account in a bank; moreover, the traffic data associated with the charging operation can be preserved at the same time, thereby implementing an automatic charging system having a high reliability.